


The Ones We Love

by the-ladyhades (Itrustyoutokillme)



Series: Misc Whump [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Bound With Rope, Drabble, Gen, Gunshot, Kidnapped, Plot Twist, Torture, Whump, blooded, bruised, death of a child, hands and feet bound, killian!whump, lashed, pistol whipped, referenced character death, stripped naked, suffocation on own blood, suspended by rope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-17
Updated: 2019-05-17
Packaged: 2020-03-06 21:34:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18859549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Itrustyoutokillme/pseuds/the-ladyhades
Summary: Thanks for reading! Don't forget to follow me on Tumblr @the-ladyhades





	1. Bound

He is naked and he doesn’t remember how he came to be like this.  The floor is cold and he shivers, the rough rope binding his hands and feet chafing his skin.  He can feel the heat in his knee, most likely where he impacted the ground after being struck on the back of the head, the skin there grazed and bleeding.  His shoulder aches, the bruises already apparent on his skin where he was thrown into the back of a van, limp and lifeless because of his concussion.  He doesn’t remember much, the stinging wound at the back of his skull now a dull throb, dried blood matted in his hair.

With effort, he opens his eyes, blurry vision focusing on a figure in front of him, their gloved hands gripping the handle of an aged baseball bat.  He sighs, eyes fluttering closed, his last thoughts of Emma before delirium takes him back into unconsciousness his only comfort.


	2. Captive

He had been held for two days, denied food and beaten for answers to questions he didn’t know how to answer.  His muscles were weak, burning from being suspended from the ceiling of an abandoned warehouse, the rope that bound his hands pulling against his wrists.  

Blood smeared his face, a mixture of dried and fresh, the cut on his cheek from the baseball bat reluctant to stop bleeding.  He had, at some point, smudged his face against his arm, the splatter of crimson on his bicep now long since crusted over.  His head wound had reopened, his blood trickling down around the column of his neck and into his chest hair.

He couldn’t make out the face of his captors, not through his shaky vision and with one eye swollen completely shut.  He didn’t know what they were after, and he didn’t care.  All he cared about was surviving.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Don't forget to follow me on Tumblr @the-ladyhades


	3. Lashes

He had barely recovered from the way his body was bound into such a tight ball when his captors decided he should be stretched.  Ropes were tied to his wrists, aggravating the already rope burned flesh until it bled more and the lengths of rope tossed over a ceiling bar.  With a heave, two burly men pulled hard and he was yanked into a standing position, arms spread wide like he was being crucified.

His legs ached, shoulder joints burning in their sockets and the straightening of his spine after so long tied up made him wince.  And then they came, the whip cutting through the air with a hiss and cracking against his the skin of his back.  Over and over they whipped him and helplessly he tried to avoid each impact, twisting his body fruitlessly and crying out in agony.

“Please…” he begged, tears mingling with the blood on his cheeks, his body sagging against the ropes that held him up.  “Please, stop…”

But they didn’t, his whimpering pleas lost in the sound of the hard leather whip as it split his skin open again and again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Follow me for more whump on Tumblr @the-ladyhades


	4. Damage

The room has been silent for hours, the low buzz of his concussion ringing through his ears.  He doesn’t know how long he has been here, but wounds have healed and dried blood has flaked away, making way for the bruising underneath.  Not that it matters.  The abuse keeps coming and each time he hears the creak of the iron door, he expects more pain, only now he doesn’t care why.

“Killian?”

His heart pounds in his chest, hands shackled, like weights on his wrists, and because the voice is small and familiar, for a second, he thinks he is dreaming.  He peels open an eye, forehead rolling against the harsh concrete and his blurry vision narrows in on her figure, a white light cast behind her but confusingly, a gun in her hand.

“Emma?”

She is broken, mentally and physically, scars littering her arms that look like more than just self inflicted hatred.  She holds the gun steady, lips tight and jaw clenched, her fingers tightening around the grip as he scrambles to his feet. They didn’t survive, but she has, the light behind her eyes long gone, replaced by a darkness that scares him.

“Why?” He askes her and she shrugs a shoulder sideways, a tear rolling from her eyelid, and then he knows.  Henry.  “This won’t bring him back, Emma.”

“It’s your fault he’s dead!” She screams, waving the gun like a lunatic.  He’s lost her, he can see it now, wild eyes watery with grief she has never dealt with properly.

“I blame myself too,” he says quietly, looking at her with pleading eyes.  “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t,” she warns through gritted teeth, finger squeezing the trigger as he takes a step towards her.  He tried to apologize before, but words were never enough.

“It’s okay,” he soothes, shackles rattling together as he lifts his hands defensively, reaching forward a little for the gun.

“How did you ever love me, with so much darkness in my heart?” She sobs.  She steps back out of his reach, a maniacal laugh erupting from her throat that severs his heart in two.  His Emma is gone now, replaced with pure hatred, and he realizes he cannot escape.  “The best part is, it doesn’t matter what I do to you, you can’t stop loving me.”

“You are right,” he concurs sadly.  He would let her abuse him for a thousand years if it meant he could undo what happened. But he can’t, and it won’t.  “I love you, Emma Jones…”

“Shut up!”

“I will always love you, and no matter what you do to me, you will have to live with it for the rest of your life.”

The echoing crack of the gun rings out in the small cell-like room immediately followed by the thump of pain in his chest.  It feels like he has been punched, hard, his shoulder rolling back with the force and the dull ache instantly replaced with a burning as the bullet tears through his flesh.  He looks down at his wound, blood pouring out of the jagged edges as he sinks to his knees and then crumples to the floor.

The room spins, the figure looming above him the woman he once knew, fading out with his consciousness when she strikes him across the temple with the butt of the gun in her hand and his world goes black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Enjoy my art? Follow me on Tumblr @the-ladyhades


	5. Free

She visits him daily, bringing him food he doesn’t eat and water he never drinks.  She is different now.  He can’t take the chance that she has finally decided to end his suffering, instead eating only from one of the male captors.  His food comes with a beating, but at least he knows it isn’t laced with poison.

She began her visits sitting across from him in the cell, insisting on him bound and naked like when he was first taken, his humiliation putting the joyful smile on her face.  She gradually moved closer, almost within striking distance as time went on.  Vile words were said, venomous hatred for him that he takes day after day because she was right, he still loves her.

“Do you know what I want?” She asks for the millionth time.  It’s the same loaded question every day and the answer has never changed, but what she wants he cannot give her back.  No one can.  The blade in her hand twitches as she shaves his face almost tenderly, something she has come to do quite frequently.  There is no trust there and he doesn’t say a word for fear of a slashed throat.

His hands are bound in leather, new blood stains over his body that she seems to enjoy creating.  His eyes flick towards the blade again, the silver glint catching his eye but the gun on her hip drawing his attention the most.  He has noticed it before, secured in the holster at her side, only this time is different.  The holster is open and he wonders why.

“I want to be free,” she says idly, the answer different this time.  She scrapes the razor’s edge down his cheek, tilting his bloodied face back so she has better access to his neck.  He gulps and she looks him directly in the eye.  “Wouldn’t you like that too?”  Her words are laced with hidden meaning, he knows, and for a split second, he can see the glimmer of the woman he once knew behind the dark green eyes staring into his.

He realizes now why she comes to him.  Why she is so close to him with an unsecured weapon.  Why she has swapped his rope restraints for a more pliable, softer leather cuff.  It’s a silent plea, begging him to act in kindness one last time, just like he once did.  Like when they were happy and when they were a family.  When they knew each other better than they knew themselves.

She doesn’t fight him when he grabs the gun, the whole action in slow motion as he jumps back out of the rickety metal chair that crashes against the back wall of his cell.  He has her at gunpoint, the blade in her hand clattering to the floor when she lets it go and then the only sound between them in his ragged breathing and the shaking of the gun mechanism as it quakes in his grip.

“Do it,” she spits, a single tear rolling down her face.  “Take the shot, Killian.”

His name on her lips is like the way she used to say it and he falters, dropping his guard and lowering his arms.  He swallows hard, his throat dry and his lips cracked but when she takes a menacing step towards him he is quick to halt her with the gun once more.

“Do it!” she shouts at him and her voice echoes through the empty room.  “Let me go,” she whimpers, her sorrow changing her voice.  She sighs, tilts her head back and closes her eyes, a serene smile playing across her lips.  

“Why me?” He growls at her, his own voice raspy.  Tears flow from the eye he can open, the other swollen closed.

“It’s always been you,” she snorts in defeat.  “Now do it!”

She lunges and he squeezes the trigger, eyes pinching closed for the minuscule amount of time it takes the bullet to leave the barrel and tear through her chest.  She falls into him and he tosses the gun aside, the bullet clearly having pierced her lungs as she gurgles, the organs struggling to work as one fills with blood.

“Emma,” he soothes, clutching her to his chest despite the wounds she has inflicted upon him.  “I’m here, it’s okay.”  He rocks her, his hands soaked in her blood as he tries but fails to stem the flow from her sternum.  He must have nicked her heart.  There is so much blood.  “I will always love you,” he sobs.

She stills in his arms, no longer writhing against the searing hot burn in her chest, eyes fixed wide and trained on the ceiling, breath hitching in short bursts as she runs out of oxygen.

“Thank you,” she gasps, a palm flat against his bruised cheek.  One more twitch and she smiles, arm falling limply to his lap as she whispers her last breath.  “Henry.”

And then he gets it.  Freedom for him meant freedom for her, and they are the only people who could ever set each other free.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Follow me for more whump on Tumblr @the-ladyhades


End file.
